Discourse Coherence and its Relation with Cognition in

Psicologia em Pesquisa | UFJF | 7(1) | 99-107 | Janeiro-Junho de 2013
DOI: 10.5327/Z1982-1247201300010011
Discourse Coherence and its Relation with Cognition in Alzheimer’s Disease*
Coherencia del Discurso y su Relación con Cognición en la Enfermedad de Alzheimer
Lenisa BrandãoI
Tatiane Machado LimaI
Maria Alice de Mattos Pimenta ParenteII
Jordi Peña-CasanovaIII
Abstract
This study investigates discourse coherence and its relation with cognitive deficits in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Participants consisted,
in two groups of individuals, 18 with AD in the moderate and moderate severe stages of cognitive decline, and 16 older adults without
dementia matched by age, sex and education. Discourse tasks differed according to the presence of non-informative and informative prompts. Verbal comprehension, semantic memory, episodic memory and working memory were tested. Findings showed that
global coherence was affected in AD participants. Correlations between discourse and cognitive variables were observed. The strongest
correlations found related global coherence to episodic and semantic memory in the informative prompt task. Results are discussed
according to clinical and theoretical implications for the understanding of discourse production in AD.
Keywords: Discourse production; Alzheimer’s disease; coherence; cognition.
Resumen
Este estudio investiga la coherencia del discurso de las personas con enfermedad de Alzheimer (EA) y las posibles relaciones con déficits
cognitivos. Los participantes fueron 18 personas con EA en las fases moderada y severa-moderada y 16 idosos sanos pareados por edad,
educación y género. Dos tareas discursivas fueron usadas, una sin ayudas informativas y otra con ayudas informativas. La comprensión
verbal, la memoria semántica, la memoria episódica y la memoria de trabajo fueron evaluadas. Los resultados mostraron coherencia
global afectada en participantes con EA. Se observaron correlaciones entre el discurso y las variables cognitivas, especialmente entre
coherencia y memoria episódica y semántica. La discusión debate la evaluación clínica discursiva y sus implicaciones para entender la
comunicacion de personas con Alzheimer.
Palabras claves: Producción del discurso; la enfermedad de Alzheimer; coherencia; cognición.
Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (Porto Alegre), Brasil
Professora visitante CAPES, Universidade Federal do ABC (Santo André), Brasil
III
Department of Behavioral Neurology. Service of Neurology, Hospital del Mar & Behavioral Neurology Research Group, Program of Neuropsychopharmacology, Municipal Institute of Medical Research, Universidad Autonoma de Barcelona (Barcelona), Espanha
I
II
Discourse declines significantly in Alzheimer’s
disease (AD), becoming increasingly unorganized
and empty. As the disease progresses, a number of
discourse features appear, such as abrupt topic shifts,
uninformative speech, indefinite terms, meaningless
sentences and the absence of relevant elements for
the comprehension of the message expressed (Cecato
et al., 2010; Ortiz & Bertolucci, 2005). The reduction of coherence demands a greater amount of turn
taking from the listener, who often needs to interrupt
the speaker’s discourse flow to ask for clarifications
(Dijkstra, Bourgeois, Allen & Burgio, 2004; Dijkstra,
Bourgeois, Petrie, Burgio & Allen-Burge, 2002).
Coherence is the property which establishes the
relations between meaning elements in a discourse.
Additionally to its semantic nature, coherence as­
signs intelligibility to discourse through the consideration of shared representations of world knowledge and
contextual rules between communication partners.
Coherence can be classified according to the relations
between ­
sequences of propositions (local coherence)
and between each proposition, and the discourse topic
(Global coherence) (Van Dijk & Kintsch, 1983). Previous research which focused on local and global discourse
coherence in AD, converges to the idea that global coherence is ­affected earlier than local coherence in the
Brandão, L., Lima, T. M., de Mattos Pimenta Parente, M. A. & Peña-Casanova, J.
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